After 10 years of accolades for Serious Players in the Primary Classroom: Empowering Children Through Active Learning Experiences, Selma Wassermann provides readers with a second edition to her classic. Building on the original work, this new edition offers further insight into Wassermann's notion of organizing for instruction known as "Play-Debrief-Replay, a way of structuring curriculum experiences to promote children's active learning in cooperative groups and to foster independent thinking. The book also provides a theoretical framework for implementing teaching for thinking in primary classrooms. By updating references and adding a new chapter on moral dilemmas, including information that is consonant with constructivist ideologies, Wassermann continues to promote ways of teaching that stimulate children's appreciation for social and ethical issues. Her approach is holistic; it not only honors the play of children, but also the work of teachers. Accessible and enlightening, this new edition is a must-read for all early childhood professionals. Parents, too, will find this volume useful.

Practicing what it preaches, Playing to Get Smart will be a playful reading experience for teachers and parents alike. With jokes, riddles, and stories sprinkled throughout, the authors show how important play is for children of all ethnic and socioeconomic groups, from birth to age 8. This provocative challenge to teachers and parents of young children demonstrates why play is the most effective way for children to develop critical life skills such as thinking creatively and social problem solving. It explains why teachers need to provide opportunities for quality play and why parents need to understand the benefits of play for their children.

This classic bestseller, now updated for today's diverse teaching force and student populations, explores the benefits of sociomoral practices in the classroom. The authors draw on recent research to show how these approaches work with children ages 2–8. They focus on how to establish and maintain a classroom environment that fosters children's intellectual, social, moral, emotional, and personality development. Extending the work of Jean Piaget, the authors advocate for a cooperative approach that contrasts with the coercion and unnecessary control that can be seen in many classrooms serving young children. Practical chapters demonstrate how the constructivist approach can be embedded in a school program by focusing on specific classroom situations and activities, such as resolving conflict, group time, rule making, decision making and voting, social and moral discussions, cooperative alternatives to discipline, and activity time.

This unique book features an array of approaches, strategies, and tools for teaching multiculturally in the early years. The teachers and classrooms portrayed here provide young children with rich educational experiences that empower them to understand themselves in relation to others. You will see how amazing teachers engage in culturally responsive teaching that fosters educational equity while also meeting state and national standards (such as the Common Core State Standards). This engaging book is sprinkled with questions for reflection and implementation that encourage educators to start planning ways of enhancing their own teaching, making their early childhood setting a more equitable learning space. Book Features: Multicultural education in action,including the everyday issues and tensions experienced by children and their families. Powerful vignettes from diverse Head Start, preschool, kindergarten, 1st- and 2nd-grade classrooms throughout the United States. Sections on “Getting Started” and “Considering Obstacles and Exploring Possibilities” in each chapter. A list of multicultural children’s books and resources for further reading. Chapters: Multicultural Tools and Strategies for Teaching Young Children Multicultural Education as Transformative Education Interviews: Encouraging Children to Ask Questions Critical Inquiry: Supporting Children’s Investigations Culture Circles with Multicultural Literature: Addressing Issues of Fairness Community Resources and Home Literacies: Developing Funds of Knowledge Technology: Media(ting) Multicultural Teaching Storytelling and Story Acting: Creating Spaces for Children to Negotiate Change Reflecting on the Possibilities of Teaching Multiculturally: What Next? What If? Mariana Souto-Manning is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. “A profound, rich, and rewarding meditation and deep conversation with teachers fully engaging young children with culture, social history, and learning for the future. This wide-ranging book escapes temporal, spatial, and disciplinary boundaries. Read it and reflect on how you can take it into your own life of learning.” —Shirley Brice Heath, Professor Emerita, Stanford University “Early childhood educators will experience this unique book as a warm and detailed invitation to engage in multicultural education. The emphasis throughout is on “multi”—multiple pedagogical approaches, from culture circles to podcasts to story acting, and multiple cultural heritages embodied by active children and teachers. From a critical perspective and alongside creative teachers who aspire to be transformative, Souto-Manning links accessible theory with rich and thoughtful practices.” —Celia Genishi, Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University “Mariana Souto-Manning’s Multicultural Teaching in the Early Childhood Classroom rightly places the use of deficit thinking and ineffective teaching strategies in the wasteland of classroom instruction. The author superbly documents and explains ways of teaching multiculturally that will richly benefit the learning of all students and make teaching become the fun that teachers dreamed it would be when they first said, ‘I want to teach because I love kids.’” —Carl A. Grant, Hoefs-Bascom Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison “Multicultural Teaching in the Early Childhood Classroom encourages teachers to honor, affirm, and challenge even our very youngest children to think inclusively, critically, and democratically—a necessity if we are to help develop knowledgeable, caring, and empowered learners.” —Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In this engaging book, the authors share stories from their practice and research about several young children with a variety of developmental delays and disabilities and their teachers. They explore the ways that teachers and children respond in real classrooms to real challenges, examining both those opportunities that are capitalized on as well as those that are missed. The book addresses a wide array of issues that contribute to our understanding of what makes a difference in the inclusive early childhood classroom, including the role of development, ways of honoring different learning styles, building a sense of classroom community, addressing power dynamics, and responding to conflict with both teachers and peers. This practical resource introduces a framework that will inspire early childhood teachers to reflect on their own practices and take action to develop new strategies for teaching in inclusive classrooms.

Drawing from a professional development model that was developed with funding from the National Science Foundation, this book is an essential resource for anyone who wants to support preschool children to be STEM thinkers and doers. The text features research-based resources, examples of field-tested activities, and highlights from the classroom.